Sri Lanka rebels show no signs of peace: government official

SINGAPORE (AFP) - The Tamil Tigers have shown no sign they are genuine about wanting peace even though the door remains open for a return to negotiations, a senior Sri Lankan official said Saturday.
"We are looking for a negotiated end to this conflict... so far they have shown no inclination to enter into any constructive dialogue with a view to ending this conflict," Palitha Kohona, a secretary with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told reporters on the sidelines of a regional security summit.
He said "the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) is free to come back to the negotiating table but... must do so genuinely with a commitment to negotiating a sustainable peace and for that it must also leave aside its weaponry."
Kohona's comments at the Shangri-La Dialogue -- or Asia Security Summit -- came as the separatist Tamil Tigers rejected government plans to devolve more power to the island's north and east, while a pro-rebel website said they had killed 31 troops in the latest fighting.
There was no immediate comment from Sri Lanka's defence ministry.
Kohona said President Mahinda Rajapakse's government had learned the lessons of the past and will only enter into peace talks with the LTTE if they show they are genuine and willing to put down their weapons.
Fighting has escalated sharply since Colombo pulled out of a six-year Norwegian-brokered truce with the LTTE in January believing it had the military strength to crush them.
The Tamil Tigers launched their armed struggle for a separate Tamil state in the north in 1972, and the ensuing conflict has left tens of thousands of people dead in the Sinhalese majority island.
Kohona said the LTTE re-armed itself to hit back after the truce began in 2002, and vowed the present government "is no longer willing to simply agree to a ceasefire agreement without a commitment on the part of the LTTE to achieve a final solution to this problem."
Rajapakse vowed last Tuesday to press on with a military campaign to crush the rebels, a day after guerrillas set off a bomb inside a train killing nine people and wounding 84.
B. Nadesan, head of the political wing of the LTTE, denied the Tigers had attacked civilians, and accused Rajapakse of "paying lip service" to a political solution while pursuing a "war against the Tamil nation."